ONSCREEN HOMAGE

Which Oscar-Winning Actress Wants to Play Beyoncé in a Movie?

Rather, which Oscar-winning actress has gone on record saying that she would like to play Beyoncé, reigning empress of planet Earth, in a future film? (Because it seems likely that most of them would be up for the challenge.)

The answer is Reese Witherspoon. The Wild star confessed to the dream casting during The Hollywood Reporter’s annual actress roundtable, where she was joined by other 2015 awards contenders including Amy Adams, Patricia Arquette, Laura Dern, Felicity Jones, and Hilary Swank. While Witherspoon was the only person who responded to the question, about which contemporary woman each would want to play, Adams chimed in to say that she would want to do one better than portray Bey on film. “I just want to be her,” Adams said.

The sprawling conversation covered interesting ground, and the actresses touched on a few hot-button Hollywood issues, including Renée Zellweger, who was the victim of disturbingly harsh criticism last month after some Internet users suggested that the actress’s face appeared different.

“It’s cruel and rude and disrespectful,” Witherspoon said of the Internet’s criticism of Zellweger. “It bothers me immensely . . . I know this is so Pollyanna of me, but why—and it's particularly women—why do they have to tear women down? And why do we have to tear other women down to build another woman up? . . . Like, this one looks great without her makeup but that one doesn't look good without her makeup, and it's all just a judgment and assault that I don't—look, men are prey to it as well. I just don't think it's with the same sort of ferocity.”

“I ended up in a lot of Twitter battles with people about it,” Arquette said. “I had a lot of women write to me that [the hacked actresses] were stupid to take those pictures to begin with. Victim-blaming—we have a long history of that. . . . That society thinks it’s O.K. [to hack the photos], that it’s their fault—that’s deviant. That’s what we’re teaching our kids, that if somebody messes up or does what they want in their private life, they’re stupid and you can, basically, communally molest them.”

To read the complete conversation—including a crazy anecdote from Dern involving Scott Baio and a white leisure suit—click here. And to read Vanity Fair’s November cover story on Lawrence, including the first comments that the Oscar-winning actress made on the subject of her stolen photos, click here.